Let’s now reexamine the difference between those on the right and those on the left, based on some data in a fascinating report from the Chronicle of Philanthropy on the generosity of 359 cities in America.

It turns out that “red state” America is far more generous than “blue state” America. I was thinking of writing about the implications of this new research, but I found out that somebody else beat me to it – and said everything I could possibly say.

According to the Chronicle, the most generous city in America is Provo, Utah, where residents typically give away 13.9 percent of their discretionary income. Boston, by contrast, ranks No. 358: In New England’s leading city, the median household donates just 2.9 percent of its income to charity. Provo’s generosity is typical for its region. Of the 10 most generous cities in America, according to the Chronicle’s calculations, six are in Utah and Idaho. Boston’s tight-fistedness is typical too: Of the 10 stingy cities at the bottom of the list, eight are in New England — including Springfield (No. 363) and Worcester (No. 364). What’s the matter with Massachusetts? How can residents of the bluest state , whose political and cultural leaders make much of their compassion and frequently remind the affluent that we’re all in this together , be so lacking in personal generosity? And why would charitable giving be so outstanding in places as conservative as Utah and Idaho? The question is built on a fallacy.Liberals, popular stereotypes notwithstanding, are not more generous and compassionate than conservatives. To an outsider it might seem plausible that Americans whose political rhetoric emphasizes “fairness” and “social justice” would be more charitably inclined than those who stress economic liberty and individual autonomy. But reams of evidence contradict that presumption, as Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks demonstrated in his landmark 2006 book, Who Really Cares .

Jacoby summarizes the entire discussion in these two sentences.

…this doesn’t mean that there aren’t generous philanthropists in New England. It doesn’t mean selfishness is unknown on the right. What it does mean is that where people are encouraged to think that solving society’s ills is primarily a job for government, charity tends to evaporate.

In other words, statists pretend to be compassionate. And they compensate for their stinginess by wanting to squander our money.

The fact that government programs generally hurt the people they’re designed to help seems irrelevant to them. It’s all about good intentions. But only good intentions with someone else’s cash.

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Sorry, but this is more about Mormons who pay 10% of their income for tithing and another few percent for monthly fast offerings. Factor out donations to the LDS church and charitable giving in Utah drops precipitously. (I’ve tried to find statistics which factor out donations to ones own church, but was unable to.)

It depends upon what the church does with the money, doesn’t it? Part of what my church pays for is the salary of our pastors–not very charitable you might say. But then our pastors do a lot of organizing of volunteer activity in our community. Our campus pastor is a leader in the Habitat for Humanity organization in our town, and he involved many of the students who participate in LCM. I don’t have time to do the work for Habitat that he does, so I contribute to my church. Yes, there are churches that spend too much money on building Crystal Cathedrals and the like, but they are not the majority.
And the itemize v not-itemize dichotomy is just silly. People with enough income to make charitable donations frequently also have homes with mortgages and children and day care expenses and. . . . They itemize.
While there are generous people and greedy people in every group, the analysis is basically accurate. Progressives rely on government to do the caring with OPM, one of the most addictive substances known to man.

LDS tithing is almost entirely used to perpetuate the LDS church. That which is left over is invested. LDS fast offerings are used to help Mormons in need, but those expenses have become increasingly opaque over the years.

The itemize vs. not-itemize incentive isn’t silly at all. Being able to itemize literally means you are being charitable with other people’s money. If you can itemize and give 10% of your gross in tithe, you aren’t really giving 10%, but something less.

Lest you worry I’m simply picking on Mormons, I don’t consider giving money to NPR a charitable donation, with the stress on charitable. (I gave up on one legitimate charity when it became clear that they were spending magnitudes more money raising money than actually spending it.)

Finally, is there a substantive difference between demanding government perform charity versus demanding religions do it? In both cases, the demand largely exceeds any individual’s contribution, be it voluntary or via taxes. Having said that, there is no question that socialistic policies have actively displaced charitable organizations in many areas, such as schools and hospitals. Could that be rolled back? (The Catholic church didn’t simply shut down schools because of government intervention, but because of a lack of money and volunteers.)

If I could pledge allegiance to a clan who comes to your house, takes half your money, keeps half of what it takes, and gives me the remaining quarter AND I could somehow get away with it, then I might just do so.

In democracy, I can [get away with it].

But those democracies where people like me rise to majoritarian status cannot produce enough, cannot grow fast enough, fall behind, and decline.

Predictably I react by trying to postpone my own personal decline by being ever more thuggish, until the whole thing either implodes or my country fades away into collective loss of prosperity and irrelevance.

That is the scenario unfolding in Europe. I was in the top 15% of world prosperity but found excuses to wage war on the top 1%. I’m now on my way to the mid 50% as my country collectively advances on a mere 1-2% growth trendline, inexorably drowned by a rising tide of humanity growing along a 5% growth trendline. Right around the time where three billion emerging world souls started having an effort-reward curve after centuries, I have been unable to resist the shortcut of prosperity through flattening of the effort-reward curves in my own country, i.e. redistribution and the fallacy of growth shortcuts through centralized collective management of economic activity.

I’d argue that the main difference between private giving (including giving to the church) and government programs is that one is forced and thus has no pressure at all to be efficient. The rest are solely dependent on the goodwill and donations of others and are under more pressure to be efficient with what they receive because they never know for sure when their money streams will dry up.

Government programs waste an incredible amount of every dollar not on “helping” the people who need it, but on keeping the bureaucratic apparatus fat and happy. Private charities can waste like this, too, but no one forces you to give your money there, so you can do your research ahead of time to see how your dime is being spent.

I’ve long recommended that “liberals” (i.e., State-fellating tax-happy coercion-junkies), instead of pouring all that money into Obama’s relection campaign and other statist causes, take all that money and just give it to poor people. If Darth Soros, the Hollywood Left, the Park Avenue Pinkoes, et all, simply tithed their income into a fund to buy poor people medical coverage, adequate housing, etc. (in honor of “liberal” Jason Alexander, they could call it “The Human Fund–Money for People”) Ten per cent of that crowd’s income would keep all the pooor and needy in the US living a pretty decent life. Instead they’d rather pour that money into advancing the State, so they can force other people to finance their vaunted “compassion.”

When I pay less in taxes because I made charitable donations, it was still all my money. Saying that I am contributing to my church or some other charity with someone else’s money suggests that the money I earned is actually someone else’s to begin with. I expect that kind of attitude among progressives, but it would be nice if they would recognize that they believe Obama when he tells us that our success is not really our own, a ludicrous notion that if allowed to take root in our society will be its death knell.

Convergence to the average world ideological norm will yield convergence to the average world prosperity level. That is the journey that Americans elected Mr. Obama to help them complete. The sirens have sung this song to many other nations past. Americans are finally ripe for it.

In Arthur Brooks’ book, he already addressed the claim that donations to churches explain the difference. Religious people give more to SECULAR charities than secular people give to them. The study is valid: people who support government programs to help the poor are, on average, far less likely to give their own money to help the poor.